The present invention relates to calling party identification (CPID) services and, more particularly, is directed to a cordless telephone system that announces CPID information through a speaker in the handset.
Calling Party Identification (CPID) services are available to many telephone customers throughout the United States. Generally, the telephone customer will purchase a device that receives CPID signals from the central office of the telephone company, which indicate a caller's telephone number. This telephone number is displayed so that the called party can identify the caller and decide whether or not to take the call.
In a telephone system without message taking capability, real time delivery of CPID information is very desirable and useful. For this purpose, a multi-line liquid crystal display (LCD) and its attendant integrated driver circuit (IC) have been employed. However, this can be an expensive and difficult feature to implement in a cordless telephone, due to the size restrictions of the handset and the complex protocols necessary for digital transmission of the CPID data to the handset.
Announcement of calling party identification information using synthesized speech is well known in the art. However, there is no prior art that discloses a system for using speech synthesis or text-to-speech to announce CPID information from a cordless telephone handset. Thus, voice announcement of CPID information has been limited to using an adjunct unit or adding components to ordinary telephone equipment. Both options are likely to be costly and complex to implement.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,894,861 to Fujioka discloses a telephone system for audibly announcing calling party identification information if the caller's telephone number corresponds to one of a plurality of telephone numbers pre-registered by the user. Fujioka requires a separate keyboard and a key identification circuit for entering the information that will be announced when a specific party calls. In the preferred embodiment, Fujioka also requires a display. When a call is received, the central processing unit (CPU) checks the telephone number of the caller against the numbers stored in memory. When a match is made, the CPU transfers the ID information to a speech generator which converts the contents of the memory to speech signals and sends these signals to a speaker. If there is no coincidence with the information in memory, the CPU transfers only the originating subscriber's number or basic information such as "TELEPHONE CALL" to the speech generator. However, though Fujioka discloses the use of a memory pre-storing caller information, there is no real time transfer of caller name from the information transmitted along the telephone line.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,530 to Reese discloses a telephone system for remotely obtaining the calling party identification information of previous callers. The system converts stored CPID information into synthesized speech and communicates this information to a remote user in response to a predetermined DTMF code that the user enters from a remote telephone location, enabling the remote user to determine who has called him or her. Essentially, Reese adds a data receiver/decoder to a standard telephone set. This data receiver/decoder contains, among other things, an address decoder, a call progress detector, an on/off hook detector, a DTMF receiver-decoder and a tone generator. Reese thus discloses an apparatus that can be included as part of a telephone set or coupled to a telephone set as a separate, stand-alone unit. However, Reese does not teach or suggest supplying this information directly to a speaker at the local telephone at the time the call is received. In other words, Reese is lacking in three important aspects, namely (a) providing the speech synthesized information directly to a loudspeaker, (b) providing the voice announcement at the local telephone and (c) providing the voice announcement in real time at the time the call is received.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,672,660 to Curtin discloses an apparatus that uses speech synthesis to advise a user of a particular telephone number that is being called by the caller. A user of the apparatus would assign different telephone numbers to select individuals. When the individual calls one of the specific telephone numbers, the apparatus announces which number is being called, so that the user will know the identity of the caller. The system of Curtin requires that the user remember which telephone number he or she assigned to a particular calling party. It also requires that the user have five to ten different telephone numbers on a single telephone line.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,899,358 and 5,007,076 to Blakely disclose an apparatus that uses a text-to-speech unit to generate speech signals for the announcement of a name of a calling party (from a database search). The CPID information can be spoken in place of or in addition to the ringing signal. Similar to Fujioka, the system of Blakely requires a data base search to identify the calling party's name based on CPID information received from the telephone company's central office.